Searching

If she had to chose one of her senses to live without, it would never be her hearing. After 23 years living in the city, she may as well have been deaf to the sound of nature. The day she moved into a small town, with ponds and woods and lakes and deer, she thought it was too quiet. She could hear nothing but her own thoughts haunting her. She’d go for walks searching for the sounds she longed to hear, and she’d try so hard to hear the beauty that she would get severe migraines. She eventually began walking with her iPod on, playing her favorite music. She’s walk, and sing, and she’d enjoy it. She thought, “maybe this is the beauty,” until the day her iPod died and she looked up to find that she was lost—with a beautiful lake splayed in front of her. Birds were singing, small waves were lapping at the edges of the large pool, and crickets chirped to the beat of her own heartbeat. She had finally stopped looking for the beauty and her own feet carried her to it. She had finally stopped straining to hear it, and she found it was so loud that she wondered if maybe she had forgotten how to hear it. She stopped trying to see the beauty, and here it was right before her very eyes. She was in awe, but hurt. She hated that she had to get lost in order to see the beauty. She was hurt that it took her months to find the beautiful sound in the wind blowing by her. And the wind led her to hear the birds across the field conversing with the birds no less than three feet away from her. She closed her eyes and sat on the ground like a child would. The sounds were amplified to such an extent that she felt her heart open to the simplicity of it. She lay down in her back in awe, stretched her arms out, and it was almost as if she was absorbing the earth… she finally found the beauty she longed for her whole life. So she stood up, intent to find her way home, and there it was—her house— right through the trees. She was home.